Pat Conroy

Contemporary southern author Pat Conroy wrote a number of highly popular books, including The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, and Beach Music. Conroy also achieved considerable success as a screenwriter. He was the author or coauthor of several Hollywood and television scripts, most notably the film adaptations of his own novels, the Prince of Tides and Beach Music.

Hurricane Season (2001)Karen Bjorneby"Karen Bjorneby writes stories with a voice that is uncommonly powerful, visceral and precise. Her short stories can wound and lacerate, or cut to the bone then alarm you with their tenderness and sweetness and grace."

Prague (2002)Arthur Phillips"Prague is one of those rare books that help define and identify a whole generation, in the same way that Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises introduced his own lost generation."

Sweetsmoke (2008)David Fuller"Sweetsmoke is a fascinating and gripping novel about the Civil War. The slave, Cassius Howard, is a great fictional character, and his story is part mystery, part love story, and a harrowing portrait of slavery that reads with the immense power of the slave narratives. A tour de force for David Fuller."

Heir To the Everlasting (2011)Janice Daugharty"Janice Daugharty is a natural-born writer, one of those Georgia women like O'Connor, McCullers, or Siddons who are best grown in small towns, a long way from city lights. There is a lot of red clay and long nights in every line she puts on paper."

Man in the Blue Moon (2012)Michael Morris"Michael Morris has been one of my favorite Southern writers. His new novel is reason for great celebration - a beautifully wrought portrayal of small-town Southern life. Buy it. Read it."

Fate Moreland's Widow (2015)John Lane"The literature of the southern mill village has been underdone and this magnificent novel adds greatly to it. What John Lane does better than anyone I have read is explore the interrelatedness of both the mill worker and the mill owner, trapped by the desires and abuses of unchecked power. Their symbiosis is opaque and troublesome. In the widow Novie Moreland, John has crafted a masterfully nuanced new symbol of male obsession and female resilience poised to become the Circe of the Carolina foothills."